In the poem “The Angel” by William Blake, the speaker describes a dream where he is a maiden guarded by an angel. The angel comforts her while she cries over her love for the angel, unknown to him because she says she “hid from him my hearts delight” on line eight. The angel then leaves and the maiden collects herself, arming her fears “with ten thousand shields and spears” on line twelve. The arming of her fears means she is giving her fears power, which distances herself from the angel. By the end of the poem the Angel comes back “in vain” on line fourteen because he sees how old she’s grown. What she feared; growing old and remaining unmarried, gives her something to fend the angel off with, whether she wants to or not. Blake’s drawings change the depiction of the poem through the way he colors the maiden, the angel, and the background. Some maidens look younger like the maiden depicted at the beginning of the poem, and some maidens look older like the maiden depicted at the end of the poem. For example, Copy T shows the maiden with golden hair and red hues in her face that make her look younger. Copy L shows the maiden with grey hair, making her look older. This copy also has a sky painted like the morning scene in the third stanza with red hues. Archives change the way we read poems because they allows us to see the artist’s creative process and uncover different meanings to poems depending on how the artist chooses to represent the poem. Archives allow us to see multiple forms of the same poem at once and create a community where we can talk about their different meanings.
The imagery of a guardian angel figure is similar to the one I saw in the poem “Nurse’s Song”. I thought it was also important that the poem starts out with the line : “I Dreamt a Dream!”. I agree with you that she has a fear of growing old and being unmarried, and so the poem seems to be describing a nightmare she had.
I like your interpretation of the line, “I dried my tears & arm’d my fears” (12), in which you wrote that the Queen armed her fears to give “her fears power, which distances herself from the angel.” I may be reading too much into the poem, but I wonder if Blake is saying that, when the angel left her, the Queen lost her faith in religion, and hardened (arm’d) herself against the world and God as a result. Then, when the Queen got older and the angel returned (or the Queen considered returning to religion), it was too late. She had hardened (arm’d) herself for too long and she could not regain a faith in God.
I think that the colors in each engraving show the different stages that are described in the poem. Since the reader would not see all of the engravings that we see, it would mean that they would interpret the poem in a different way. This speaks a lot to the way that archives can help us read texts differently.
I like your interpretation of the poem and how the engravings relate to it. It is interesting to think that by drawing some maidens young and others old, he is changing the take away from the poem. If the maiden is young, the reader is more likely to remember the beginning, however if she is old, they are always reminded of the end.